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CBC News editor in chief Tony Burman
- May 28, 2007 3:27 PM |
- By Your Voice
The Your Interview podcast with Tony Burman has been cancelled. Please check out his blog, CBC Inside Media.
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Comments (6)
One of the challenges of covering important emerging news stories is the potentially astronomical personal cost. (In your own travels, these would include the missions to Sudan, Beirut, Baghdad, etc.) In fact, recently, the potential for personal loss seems to have become more extreme (e.g., roadside bombs and the explicit targeting of journalists). Is this a real increase in risk? And, more generally, what is it about actually "going there" that makes it worth the risk? Stories get filed from London and New York all the time; how are they different?
Mr. Burman,
First, I want to thank you for opting not to publish the Virginia Tech Massacre "press kit", in hind site, I`m confident the CBC made the right choice and hopefully, it will influence other media outlets to reconsider their role in this "killing for attention" dilemma.
I think you'll agree that the citizen writers who shared their disgust online via blogs, such as the ever popular CBC Online comments, were instrumental to the backlash that led to this debate.
So my question to you is:
With a legitimate tool to gather citizen feedback like CBC Online and other blogs, do you think our leaders are going to use it to our benefit, by responding to our needs...or, will our leaders use this valuable information for their benefit, to use against us?
Thanks, keep up the good work!
SL Sheehan
Ottawa, ON
The CBC's opinions, including your columns, on the topics of the day are invariably on the left or far-left political or social spectrum - such as, global warming is man-made and we are hurtling towards imminent disaster, Lord Black is guilty (before his trial started), George Bush is evil, Stephen Harper is dangerous, the Conservatives are reckless and/or in the hip pocket of the US, shooting is schools are caused by guns (not the maniacs pulling the triggers) and is the result of lax gun laws, etc etc etc. Other than Rex Murphy, do you not have anyone with an opposite opinion on any of these issues? Given the CBC is supported by taxpayers on all sides of these issues aren't Canadians entitled to opinions which reflect all sides of these important or topical issues? Does the CBC not have an obligation to be even-handed? If it does, where are the contary opinions (Rex is appreciated but he is fighting an uphill battle alone!)?
Why has there been no national news on the current strike at CP Rail, which involves almost 3200 canadian maintenance and track inspectors? This strike has been ongoing for over 2 weeks now and I have not heard anything with regard to this. I have visited the Teamsters website and read where there have been mud slides covering the trains and tracks; where CP police have brutually handcuffed legal strikers, but have heard nothing on any national news broadcast or in any national paper. Why is this? I would like to know exactly why the Executives at CP Rail, would hide this potentially dangerous situation from all of us share holders? Thank you, Debbie Clouthier
In part to preempt a unproductive debate with Robert, but also to get your opinion about an underlying issue implicit in the questions he's raised, I'd like to ask you about an approach that has recently gained popularity in medical fields: evidence-based practice.
This seems to me to be a neutral way forward on partisan issues like those examples cited above: First ask, "what does the evidence say?" Then balance the reporting around what has been rigorously tested and accepted as knowledge. (Rather than enabling the typical blather of lobbyists that results from, and contributes to, intellectual laziness.)
So, my question: Have you thought at all about the interdisciplinary application of "evidence-based practice" to the field of journalism? Is this the nearest approximation of "being on the ground," when no journalist can actually "go there" to gain insight into abstract issues like climate change or gun control?
If the CBC is so confident of the quality and integrity of it's reporting, why is there no substantial opportunity to critique and comment on it on your own airwaves?
Your current strategy seems to be to simply drain off all criticisms on to blogs that no one reads and then it's business as usual.
A media roundtable of people with informed and diverse opinions who aren't beholding to the CBC could be quite stimulating.
Here we are on the internet, where a page like The Drudge Report can get 15 million hits. An evolving technology that is changing and informing my life and yours, perhaps changing civilization as we know it. It's become vital and ... you don't need a speech from me about it.
Why is the internet treated as a trivial pastime by news channels when it could be covered as an event in itself?
There was a time when you went into work Monday morning all anyone wanted to talk about was last night's broadcast of This Hour Has Seven Days. And I realize that the choices we had on TV in those days were slightly more limited than today, and sadly, no one has stepped forward to fill the shoes of those fearless broadcasters. But what do you think accounts for the government's ultimate triumph in keeping controversy and dissent from the airwaves in the years that followed and today?
Is it the audience's fault, or the CBC's fear of getting a smaller hand-out from Ottawa?
That'll do. For now.
I have as many questions as you have the time.
And we didn't even get to your life story and achievements and lessons learned along the way.